Korribanos
The world of Korribanos is located in the Adas System in the galactic core. Founded thousands of years ago by a rogue Sith Lord, the planet has stayed largely isolated from the rest of the galaxy for most of its existence, though in later years it would become the capital of the Confederacy of Independent Systems and its successor, the Galactic Empire. The Empire of Korribanos is currently led by Emperor Soren Aedar. Planetary Overview Early History Geologically speaking, Korribanos is fairly young, estimated to be somewhere around 2.7 billion years old. Aside from its young age, it shares much in common with most other inhabited planets around the galaxy. After forming, it was subject to heavy cosmic barrage, incorporating the heavy elements like nickel and iron necessary for proper density and a functioning magnetic field. Sometime in its early life, Korribanos acquired a small moon. The moon, roughly a fifth the mass of the planet, was just massive enough to alter the body's axial tilt, allowing for the ever-important annual seasons. With a tilt of just over 22 degrees, its seasons are mild and not entirely unlike those of Earth. It is uncertain exactly when life first formed on Korribanos but fossils dating back to 1.9 billion years have been discovered. It is unlikely that the planet would have been capable of supporting life much before that and so it is widely accepted that the spark of life occurred sometime around 2 billion years ago. As with all life-supporting planets, early life on Korribanos was simple and began in the primordial oceans. The fossil record shows, however, that the life on Korribanos made the shift from water to land after a much shorter period than most other worlds, taking only about a billion years. Once on land, life diversified and exploded across the four continents. Life flourished for the next billion years with remarkable success. Korribanos was surprisingly geologically stable, having few active volcanoes, and the presence of a large gas giant in the system diverted all but the smallest of space debris away from the planet. It would seem the planet had everything going for it, which makes the sudden disappearance of the fossil record some 500 million years ago the single biggest puzzle in the planet's history. Scientists estimate the apparent fossil blackout lasted less than a million years but have found it to be uniform across the entire world. Over 90% of all plant and animal life abruptly disappeared then reappeared after eight hundred thousand years over a span of an estimated twenty thousand years. Discovery and Occupation In the year 4128 BNE, Korribanos' Modern Age began. A rogue Sith Lord called Adas, fleeing from the Jedi/Sith wars that had been raging for millennia, found his way into the Milky Way from the Old Galaxy. Because the Jedi had pursued him, he ordered the fleet to make a blind jump into the Core, where they stumbled across a young planet well within the galactic core's radiation shield, which made hyperspace travel and sensors unreliable with their current level of technology. He landed his entire fleet across the surface of the planet, roughly forty thousand ships with a total population of over ten million men and women. He immediately dubbed the planet Korribanos after the sacred Sith mausoleum world Korriban, after which he would also name the planet's capital. Having no indigenous sentient life, Adas' people had no difficulty establishing a Human society on the alien world. Korribanos in the Galaxy Joining the Galactic Community For thousands of years, Adas' Korribanosian Empire kept itself isolated from the rest of the galaxy, having given up their Sith practices in order to remain hidden from their Jedi enemies. While keeping to itself, it focused on advancing as a culture, particularly technologically. As their understanding of the universe grew, so did their society. Crime is nearly unheard of. The Korribanosian people are a warm, inviting people, but their advanced knowledge has, over the centuries, shaped them into a subtly arrogant people. For most of their history, Korribanosians have been less than patient with any whom they see as being less intelligent than them. The line of Emperors succeeding Adas were largely conservative, opting to remain within the home-system, despite having access to interstellar flight. But all of that would change once a young man named Josh Walker took the throne. After the sudden death of the previous Emperor, Josh Walker, the Royal Imperial Grand Vizier, assumed the throne and became the youngest Emperor in Korribanosian history. One of his first acts as Emperor was to fund an all-volunteer force to seek out and colonize the nearest habitable planet. They found that planet four light-years away. It was immediately seeded with over ten thousand colonists and named Ziostos, after the ancestral Sith homeworld Ziost. On that day, much to their delight, the Korribanosians became a two-planet race. But their expansion had only just begun. Over the course of the next decade and a half, Korribanos would colonize five more worlds: Ragnosia, Sadowan, Banis, Naddonia, and Revaniin. Shortly after assuming the throne, Emperor Walker was approached by a representative from off-world. He spoke for a newly founded alliance of worlds, banded together for mutual protection and prosperity. Seeing this as his chance to finally integrate Korribanos into the vast galactic community he had always known existed, he jumped at the opportunity. Korribanos was now a part of something greater than it had ever been in its forty-one hundred year history. Inside the Confederacy The decision to join the Confederacy of Independent Systems was largely supported by the Korribanosian people, who by this time had come to understand the importance of belonging to a community. They saw this as an opportunity to not only meet new friends but to broaden their understanding of the universe itself. To this end, the Korribanosians were very welcoming of their new friends, hosting thousands of delegates and ambassadors from the myriad allies that came with joining the Confederacy. When Korribanos was elected capital of the Confederacy, celebrations broke out planet-wide. However these were short-lived as during festivities held in Korriban, anti-Jedi terrorists attempted to assassinate the Grand Master, who was visiting as Emperor Walker's personal guest. Several Jedi and Korribanosians alike lost their lives on that tragic day. As a result of the terrorist attack, the security network of the Adas system was completely overhauled, taking the first steps towards making it one day one of the most well protected and secure planets in the galaxy. The rest of Korribanos' time in the Confederacy was peaceful and quiet and prosperous as the CIS grew in power and prestige. Korribanos and the Empire As the heart of the Confederacy it should come as no surprise that Korribanos served as the birthplace of the Galactic Empire. As the CIS grew in size and strength, its leaders recognized its limited ability to govern properly. Looking to the future when membership would grow so large as to be nearly ungovernable, Supreme Chancellor Walker, with Vice Chancellor Jenkins, started to conceive and Empire. Korribanos was the obvious choice for the new Imperial capital; the government had already been established there for several years and it was seen by most as the heart of the Confederacy. There was almost no appreciable period of transition. In the years following the founding of the Empire, Korribanos became the center of all things Imperial, hosting countless dignitaries from all over the galaxy and becoming synonymous with the Galactic Empire. The Killik Invasion When the Killiks invaded the Empire in 2 NE, the Empire went into a frenzy enhancing Korribanos' already formidable security. Although the war's front lines were thousands of light-years from the Adas System, the preservation of Imperial leadership was the primary objective. Over the course of the war, no battles ever took place within several hundred light-years of the capital system. However, on one occasion, and enemy vessel did manage to enter the system for a few moments before immediately leaving again. This was later discovered to have been Ganor Vey, a Killik Joiner tasked with familiarizing himself with the Emperor’s personal Force signature. When he related this information back to the Dark Nest, the collective of Force-users were able to track Walker through the Force, eventually leading to his kidnapping. The Organization After enjoying four years of peace after the end of the Killik War, the Empire was again plagued with enemy invasion in the year 8 NE, this time quietly infiltrated by an insidious group calling itself the Organization. Unlike with the Killik War, in the struggle against the Organization, there was no defined "front line." The group had spent years planting agents within all levels of Imperial infrastructure; even ranking military officers were revealed to be Organization plants. In this war, even Korribanos was not invulnerable. The Organization was controlled by the shadowy Lord Stryfe, who had, thousands of years before, embraced an archaic manifestation of the Force called the Darkness which granted him near limitless power. Sometime before 8 NE, Stryfe began plotting the destruction of the Galactic Empire. While the military conflicts were held light-years away from the Adas system, that did not mean the war with the Organization left Korribanos untouched. After several attempts by Organization agents on the lives of key Imperials, an elite detail of guards were ordered to the The Imperial Palace to protect the Emperor at all times. As Emperor Walker was introducing himself to the stormtroopers, one of them pulled a concealed lightsaber from his armor and proceeded to attack the Sith Lord. Walker battled the rogue trooper around his office, eventually throwing his through a window and down to the streets of Korriban. The Organization agent did not perish, however, and embraced the same power that maintained his master, Lord Stryfe. It wasn't long before the newly empowered agent, calling himself The Commander, waged war on the city of Korriban itself. He raised an army of Dark creatures, which spread through the streets and killed hundreds of citizens unfortunate enough to be caught outside. As the battle raged on in the streets of the capital, Emperor Walker retreated into the bowels of the Palace and himself fell into the embrace of the Darkness, damning himself in order to battle adversaries too powerful for any known Force-user to defeat. Within his first moments as the Dark Emperor, Walker single-handedly washed away the Dark armies running rampant in the streets, the creatures all evaporating with the tiniest of gestures. He then took the battle to the Commander. The two powerful beings met in a Korriban alleyway just three kilometers from the Imperial Palace, and battled as gods. The level of destruction was unlike anything the city had ever seen before. Entire city blocks were rendered into twisted piles of rubble. The Emperor used his new and terrible powers to tear open a vent in the planet's crust and billions of tons of liquid rock erupted from the ground and flowed through the streets. Though the Emperor then resealed the vent, the damage was done. Korriban was in chaos; thousands were left dead. Reconstruction After the apparent death of Emperor Walker on Kel Dor and the vast destruction he caused, Korribanos began to rebuild under the leadership of the former Grand Vizier, Soren Aedar. Aedar, though not quite the charismatic and awe-inspiring figure that the former Emperor had been, was an undying patriot with overwhelming pride for his homeworld who made it his mission to not only erase the scars of war from the surface, but elevate Korribanos' place in the galaxy. While serving as the Imperial capital, Emperor Aedar nevertheless saw Korribanos' culture and identity quickly evaporating under the intense glare of the Galactic Empire. Korribanos was synonymous with the Empire, something Aedar very much wished to remedy. Following Emperor Aedar's ascension to the throne, Korribanos began a massive reconstruction program, rebuilding not simply the physical damage of the war but the perceived cultural damage inflicted by its service as the Imperial capital world. Sith influence As the planet was founded by a Sith warfleet, it was inevitable that the Sith culture would heavily influence their posterity. Indeed, even after four millennia, the majority of Korribanosians claim the Sith philosophy as their belief of choice. However, out of fear of discovery by the Jedi of the time, Lord Adas required that his Dark Lords renounce their Sith ways and cease practicing the Force. Within two generations, there wasn't a single Force-user left. And so Korribanos remained a world entirely bereft of any Force practitioners for four thousand years, until 12 NE, when, while attending the Third Jedi Convocation, Emperor Walker was critically injured during an attack and experienced a Force vision. In this vision, he was instructed by Lord Adas to fix his, Adas's, mistake and formally establish a working Sith Order on Korribanos. And so, upon recovering from his wounds, Lord Walker, now calling himself Darth Taral, founded the Imperial Order of the Sith, sanctioned by the Empire of Korribanos for the purpose of training Korribanosians in the ways of the Sith in an attempt to regain the culture that their ancestors denied them. The Future of Korribanos As Lord Taral’s Sith Order grew and spread beyond the borders of Korribanos, many began to see it as a sort of mirror to the Jedi Order centered on Earth. Originally just Korribanos’ national Sith Order, by the year 300 NE, it had been officially incorporated into the Galactic Empire. Indeed, within just a handful of generations after Taral retook the Imperial throne, Emperor Aedar’s worst fears were realized as Korribanos lost its status as a sovereign Imperial member and instead became the only world run exclusively by the Empire itself. Though it was allowed to retain its name, the millennia-old government of Korribanos was swept away and the Galactic Emperor, always a descendent of Emperor Walker, directly governed the world. Korribanos would be the place where the Jedi Rebellion famously began in 307 NE when, on the orders of the Jedi Council on Earth, the Korribanosian Jedi Temple rose up and attacked the Sith Temple. After the war, the people of Korribanos took on a deep-seated hatred of Jedi and many anti-Jedi movements got their start on the Imperial capital world. Within a few centuries, the Jedi had been all but forgotten; only the government seemed to remember them, routinely sending its Sith Lords on clandestine Jedi-hunting errands. Though the Imperial Order of the Sith remained centrally located on Korribanos, over the centuries it expanded and placed Sith Temples on a number of member worlds. Eventually it rivaled the old Jedi Order in size and influence. Category:Galactic Empire Category:Imperial Order of the Sith Category:Imperial Leadership